Blog
Generative AI and Robotics – A tipping point?
Robotics has been a promising field for many years, steadily adding value across various industries by improving processes and outcomes. Despite its progress, the technology has not fully reached its anticipated potential yet. There are considerable opportunities for...
The superpower of customer discovery in getting to product-market fit
Are you fully leveraging the superpower of customer discovery before you build? If you are building a B2B SaaS/AI startup, a well-executed customer discovery process can be a game changer. And it can often be done before writing the first line of code for your new...
Focus early on deal size versus sales friction in B2B SaaS
Success in the SaaS world isn’t confined to a specific average Annual Contract Value (ACV). Successful SaaS/Cloud companies have been built at almost every ACV. For instance: Docusign: ~$1K average deal size Hubspot: ~$10K ServiceNow: $100K+ Veeva: $1M+ Selling a tech...
100x engineers? 1000x engineers?
Tech leaders have long sought out the elusive 10x software engineer. With the AI and automation tools emerging from the latest in Generative AI and LLMs, we are witnessing a seismic shift in machine capabilities. At Emergent, we have been meeting companies and seeing...
Sales is sales, but venture fundraising is not
In the early days of a startup, B2B startup founders are often building their organizational muscle on two core areas — sales and fundraising. These two feel similar in some ways, and we see many early-stage founders implicitly start to use the same tactics while...
Warm up that cold email
Are you or your company sending cold emails to prospects? Cold outreach today is a very valuable and fairly scalable channel for generating leads and interesting conversations. For startups, cold outreach — when done right — is an excellent tool. It can be...
Sizing your addressable market
The Market Size section on pitch decks is valuable real estate but is often a missed opportunity in our experience. Here are some suggestions to make this section of your pitch work for you at the seed and early stages: How much will be spent on your category in 2026...
The Problem of Data Trustworthiness in Enterprises
A lot is happening in the data world these days -- ever since Jeff Bezos talked about specialized databases for specialized workloads. A natural consequence of this specialization is the proliferation of databases in a typical enterprise today - sometimes, upto 10...
Founders, determine COVID impact granularly and adapt!
There’s a lot being said and written about the impact of the current COVID-19 induced economic crisis on SaaS businesses, and how founders and management should react. Many teams have already made the first adjustments. One thing that deserves more attention is that...
What should SaaS Founders do in these times of unexpected change?
Let’s address the elephant in the room. The market has changed multiple gears within a matter of days and weeks. In these times of unexpected change, we are having many discussions with startup founders across the enterprise/SaaS landscape on how to think about their...
Where are the opportunities in today’s crowded SaaS market?
In 2020, where are the opportunities for new SaaS offerings? The enterprise market is teeming with capable incumbents. This includes several dozen public SaaS & enterprise software leaders as well as hundreds of unicorns & minicorns which will continue to...
The Emergent Pulse: A Tale of Two Geographies
Here is our December 2019 update. It went out to our ecosystem earlier this week. If you'd like to hear from us a few times a year, please subscribe here. Hello there, 2019 is almost over. It’s been the year in which startups with cross-geography models have truly...
Summer 2019 Updates: An acquisition, some funding, and the decade of Intelligent Software
Here is our Summer 2019 update. It went out to our ecosystem earlier this week. If you'd like to hear from us a few times a year, please subscribe here. Hello there, Hope you are having a fantastic summer. It has been an eventful few months in the Enterprise...
Founder’s Guide on Product Management – Part Deux
Early Stage product development is hard. Over the years, I have collected a few techniques that helped me navigate the infinite search space and prune it down to a tractable one. Most of these techniques apply for enterprise product management. Category...
Are Distributed Teams the new Cloud for Startups?
We have seen a marked increase in the number of startups being built outside traditional technology hubs such as Silicon Valley. We’ve also experienced firsthand how startups are building seamlessly distributed teams spread across many geographies. The conventional wisdom has been that it is a significant inhibitor for a startup to have team members based […]
Founder’s Guide on Product Management – Introduction
In my role at Emergent Ventures, my focus is on helping our companies; Find a product-market fit (PMF) (if they haven’t already) Instil the discipline of product management into their startup’s culture Help with network introductions and screen & hire for key positions There are numerous books and articles written on how to get […]
US-India Cross-Border Roundtable – Spring 2018
As we wrap up a whirlwind month with the massive announcement of Walmart acquiring controlling stake in Flipkart — while, the acquisition is huge for the Indian startup ecosystem, Amazon hadn’t really cracked India while Flipkart was definitely ahead in the game — I wish Flipkart would have stayed independent longer. In recent months, Nutanix also […]
Highlights from the India Cloud Summit 2017
At Emergent, one of our focus areas is to invest in global tech companies out of India. In the past, I have also invested in Israeli startups and helped them target the US market. There is much to learn from the US-Israel corridor on how to foster collaboration towards building global tech companies. With this […]